


Goodnight

by jehans



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehans/pseuds/jehans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jehan and Courfeyrac steal a few moments at the barricade tucked away together until one of them is taken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly brick-based, although I altered the barricade timeline a little to include a few small skirmishes before Jehan’s death.

They huddled together before the battle began, crouching in a hidden place in the barricade, shielded by shadows and mayhem. Jehan’s hands almost disappeared into Courfeyrac’s, and their heads were bent to each other’s shoulders.

“Are you afraid?” asked the one to the other.

“Of course I am,” Jehan replied, but neither his voice nor his body shook. “Are you?”

Courfeyrac’s lips pressed into Jehan’s neck. “Yes,” he breathed into that soft skin.

“You have to keep fighting if I fall,” Jehan said firmly. “You can’t stop, you have to keep fighting.”

“You won’t fall,” Courfeyrac growled. “Not before I do.”

“Regardless, you must fight on.”

“Don’t you believe we could make it out of here? We could win?”

“Even if we win,” Jehan pressed on in whispers, “it is unlikely that we will both make it out. We are dying, Courfeyrac. This is the hour of our twilight.”

Courfeyrac kept laying kisses into his lover’s skin. He wanted to protest, to fight against the reality that this might be the last time they would hold each other and kiss each other and love each other. But truth was in his poet’s words and he would rather love now and save fighting for the battles. “Then kiss me goodnight,” he said.

They kissed and they held each other, clinging to the other as though they were rafts in a storm. They stayed there in that moment, in that space, as long as they could, but when they climbed, one at a time, out of their hiding place, it was too soon.

Too soon to say goodbye.

 

 

A little while later, after a scare during which Courfeyrac had received a friendly blow to the head and Jehan had been brushed by enemy fire, they found themselves alone in the midst of chaos again, this time tucked into a corner of the café where some of the wounded were being attended. The others around them were caught in the frenzy and paying little or no attention to the pair in the corner, so Courfeyrac sat on the floor with Jehan half in his lap and dabbed gently at the cut on his love’s forehead with a damp rag while Jehan winced.

Breathing out in a huff as he cleaned up the wound, Courfeyrac whispered, “Thank God that bullet missed you.”

“Missed?” Prouvaire snapped back quietly. “Then whose head are you cleaning?”

Courfeyrac spared a glance around the room to make sure no one was watching — they were tucked away and out of most people’s sight — before he curled his fingers around the back of Jehan’s neck and pulled him down to press their lips together. When the kiss ended, he held Jehan there, keeping their faces close, brushing his nose against Jehan’s. “You know what I mean,” he sighed, releasing him and reaching for a bandage to bind his wound. “Thank God you weren’t killed.”

“I may be still,” Prouvaire answered after his head was bandaged, not even bothering to make sure there were no eyes on them before letting his head fall onto Courfeyrac’s shoulder, “the night is far from over.”

Courfeyrac frowned as he turned and laid a careful kiss next to the binding. “Stop talking about dying.”

“You have to accept what’s happening, my love,” Jehan breathed.

Courfeyrac shook his head. “Not this.”

They were silent another minute, allowing themselves this moment a calm. And then Courfeyrac asked, “Will you keep fighting if I go first?”

Jehan lifted his head just enough to catch Courfeyrac’s lips briefly with his own. “If you fall first,” he whispered intensely when he broke away, “I will fight until I join you.”

Fingers found fingers as Courfeyrac reached out for Jehan’s hand. He didn’t particularly like this game but somehow it felt important to play. He stroked the inside of Jehan’s palm with his thumb as he said, “If you fall first, you must wait for me to join you before you go marching on to heaven. Do you promise?”

Jehan slid further into Courfeyrac’s lap, taking his arms and wrapping them all the way around his love and tucking his face into the crook of Courfeyrac’s neck. For his part, Courfeyrac let his hands slide along Prouvaire’s back, one of them slipping into his soft, light hair and getting tangled there.

“I promise.”

 

 

After Mabeuf’s death, after the swarm had come in, after Marius had come in and saved him and then saved them all, Courfeyrac looked around for Jehan. Someone was calling the roll and he answered when he heard his own name, but his focus was on finding the other man. He didn’t see him.

When Prouvaire’s name was called, no one answered.

Courfeyrac told himself that perhaps Jehan was merely outside and did not hear his name called. Perhaps he had been wounded.

He did not allow himself to think perhaps he had been killed.

The others had noticed his absence. They were searching for him too. Everyone was looking for Jehan now.

Courfeyrac’s heart began to sink. He was not there.

“They have our friend,” he heard Combeferre’s voice say, “we have their agent. Are you set on the death of that spy?”

So he was speaking to Enjolras. Courfeyrac turned around. The images of his two friends swam into view.

“Yes,” Enjolras was saying and Courfeyrac would have hit him had he not continued, “but less so than on the life of Jean Prouvaire.”

Combeferre opened his mouth to speak again, but Courfeyrac left the room, dashing out into street. He couldn’t listen to these plans. He would go out and retrieve his love himself.

Over the barricade, Jehan refused to let his eyes close as he let his thoughts fly to Courfeyrac. _My love, my love,_ he thought, _I will honor my promise. I will meet you before the gates of Heaven._ He would face his death with clear eyes.

A rifle aimed at his head. He did not cry. Instead, he shouted.

“Vive la France! Long live the future!”

The words stopped Courfeyrac dead halfway up the barricade. The shot that followed may have hit him for all he could tell, and he felt himself falling.

The next he knew, he was on his knees at the foot of the barricade, his sword fallen nearby. The tears that blurred his vision only followed those which had stained his face.

This was it. This was the end.

 

 

It was the explosion that got him. Bossuet had fallen to his right, though he had not seen what had hit him; he’d watched Feuilly jerk back as he was shot thrice. Combeferre couldn’t see the bayonets coming toward him as he was helping a wounded soldier to his feet. But it was fire and earth and debris that took Courfeyrac, and then there was nothing.

Black.

Until there was something.

A kind of sensation. A pressing against his nose.

Did he still have a nose? Courfeyrac had been under the impression he was dead. Was it even possible to be under any impression whilst dead?

Still the pressing. It was not coming from him. He realized he had eyes. That he could open them.

It took a moment. A moment to get his eyes to flutter open. A moment to adjust to the blinding light around him. A moment to accept that he still had some kind of form. A moment before his eyes cleared and the pressure on his nose relented and he saw what was in front of him.

Jehan. Beautiful, vibrant, _alive_ Jehan, right in front of him, joyous and clean and full of light. He was sitting back on his heels now, and grinning.

“You’re awake!” he cried delightedly as Courfeyrac propped himself up on his elbows. It had been Jehan’s face which had woken him, his nose pressed against Courfeyrac’s, insistently, bringing him out of the darkness.

Courfeyrac gaped at Jehan. “You’re alive,” he replied softly, slowly reaching out to touch Jehan’s pretty face.

Jehan grinned. “I suppose, in a way,” he said, then his face screwed up a little as he realized. “I’m sorry you died,” he said genuinely.

Courfayrac’s face split into a grin. “I’m not!” he cried, suddenly pulling Jehan toward him.

Jehan yelped in delight as he was thrown forward into Courfeyrac’s arms, and then they both fell, unsupported by Courf’s arms now, into a laughing, clinging heap. Jehan buried his face in the crook of Courfeyrac’s shoulder and Courfeyrac tangled his fingers in Jehan’s hair. They laughed out of relief, out of delight.

“You waited for me,” Courfeyrac said at some point and Jehan lifted his head to look down at him.

“I told you I would,” he replied gently.

Courfeyrac smiled up at him, all the love in the universe rushing through him. He lifted his head and little and Jehan met him, kissed him with all of his own love, all of his own joy and relief and peace. As their lips parted, Courfeyrac felt the deep and true feeling of being happy. Of being home. He looked around.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Jehan answered, looking around too. “I was waiting for you. The others are here,” he added excitedly. “I think we’re meant to go further in when we’re ready.”

“Further in?” Courfeyrac couldn’t see anything around them. It was warm and dry and bright, but that was all. He saw no form, no shape. Only light.

“It takes a little while to get used to the light,” Jehan was telling him, rolling off of him and sitting up so he could look off into the distance. “But there is some kind of horizon out there. I think we’re meant to go towards it.”

“How do you know?” Courfeyrac asked, pushing himself up on his arms again.

Jehan looked back at him. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“They’re singing.”

It took some time, but eventually Courfeyrac adjusted. Eventually, his eyes became accustomed to the blinding light and he could see what was around them. Eventually, they stood and went to find their friends so they could move forward toward that bright horizon.

Eventually, he heard them sing.


End file.
